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Mark Ruffalo Emailed 'Star Wars: Episode VIII' Director for a Role

Austin Hargrave

"By the way, if there's a part in 'Star Wars,' please, anything, please consider considering me to join you"

Just because Mark Ruffalo is already famous as Marvel Studios’ Hulk doesn’t mean that he’s not eager to expand his horizons in the direction of, say, a galaxy far, far away. In fact, during a recent interview, the Avengers actor confessed to writing to his Brothers Bloom director Rian Johnson about getting a part in Star Wars: Episode VIII.

“I just reached out to Rian recently, by the way,” Ruffalo told Collider. “My email to Rian after all these years was, ‘Rian, congratulations on everything you’ve been doing. And by the way, if there’s a part in Star Wars, please, anything, please consider considering me to join you.’ ” He added, “I love hanging out with Rian so [just hanging out on set] is interesting to me, but I would like a role.”

What’s surprising about Ruffalo’s admission isn’t that he asked Johnson for a role, but that we haven’t seen more actors making similar public pleas. When it comes to roles in Marvel movies, we’ve seen Al Pacino, Jessica Chastain and Terry Crews all publicly announce interest. But Star Wars has been surprisingly quiet on the declaration front before Ruffalo — in part, perhaps, due to the secretive process through which J.J. Abrams gathered his cast for 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII, which involved nine months’ worth of meetings and screen tests before any names were announced.

Of course, such secrecy may change if Ruffalo actually gets a role in the 2017 Episode VIII. If he does, then perhaps Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who appeared in Johnson’s Brick and Looper), Adrien Brody (Ruffalo’s co-star in The Brothers Bloom) and Emily Blunt (Looper) should sharpen their email-writing skills …